Mayreau

The water taxi from Union Island takes about twenty minutes and deposits you on a small concrete pier on the windward side of Mayreau with your bags and the understanding that you are now on an island with roughly 250 inhabitants, no cars, one road (unpaved), and more goats than people. This is not a criticism. It is, in fact, precisely what you came for.

The island is about four square kilometers. You can walk from the pier to Salt Whistle Bay in about thirty minutes along a track that climbs the central hill through dry scrub and sea grape before descending to the beach. The climb is worth it for the view: standing on the ridge you can see both sides of the island simultaneously — the Atlantic to the east still white with chop, the Caribbean to the west a deep blue calm — and Salt Whistle Bay below, two crescents of white sand enclosing a stand of coconut palms at the island’s narrowest point. It is one of those views that stops your internal monologue cold.

Salt Whistle Bay gets some attention from the sailing crowd — it’s a popular anchorage, and the Saltwhistle Bay Club, a small resort of stone cottages, occupies the southern end of the northern arc. But the beach itself absorbs even the anchorage crowd without difficulty; this is not a beach that ever feels crowded. The sand is extraordinarily fine and white, the water on the bay side protected and shallow, and the palm canopy between the two arcs creates a shade that has the quality of a private room. I swam across to the windward beach — exposed and rougher, with a different texture of wave — and back, and ate a mango in the shade and did nothing useful for three hours.

The hilltop village of L’Union, reached by the island’s one road, has a Catholic church, a small primary school, and a bar that functions as the social center of the island. The woman who ran the bar when I visited had lived on Mayreau her entire life and had strong opinions about two things: the quality of the sunset from her establishment’s terrace (excellent) and the inadequacy of the mail boat service (deplorable). Both assessments proved accurate.

In the evenings, the sailing boats in the bay lit their running lights, the bar on the hill started its music — soca, then reggae, then something unidentifiable and danceable — and the stars, in the absence of any light pollution, were extraordinary. The Milky Way was visible from horizon to horizon. The goats were apparently unbothered.

When to go: December through April, when the anchorage is calm and the trade winds keep the bay clear. The island gets a surge of day-trippers in January and February when charter season peaks, but by afternoon the water taxis leave and the island becomes its quiet self again. Bring everything you need — Mayreau has no ATM and limited provisions.